Here’s a minor melee idea that came up during chatter over GURPS combat scenarios. (I do plan to post an actual battlemap report after clearing some other items off of my to-post queue.) When you close a distance gap to attack, you give the defender more time to react than you do by starting out close enough to strike. Game that consideration with this rule: If the attacker begins his turn with a Step or Move to get within striking Reach, the defender gains +2 on Active Defense vs the attack that turn. If the attacker begins his turn within striking Reach (even if he chooses to Step or Move…
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GURPS Range Ruler launched on Warehouse 23!
It’s here! Steve Jackson Games’ Warehouse 23 Store now offers the Range Ruler, a tool for finding battle map combat ranges without counting hexes. It’s based on a design I submitted to SJG, and after a kind reworking by the pros there, maintains pretty much the same look, down to the the corny text and this site’s URL. (About the only thing not there is my requisite attempt at an abbreviation. The best I could do was GURPS Range Indicator Plank (GRIP), to which Dr Kromm sagely suggested the much better GURPS Range Increment Plotter, before someone apparently nixed abbreviations altogether. Probably for darned good reason!) Best of all for you, the…
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Game design musing: New Damage for ST (GURPS)
This old (2010?) article was placed under the “Rules Bit” umbrella of minor rules tweaks for GURPS. But mucking with ST-based damage scores involves a number of considerations; it’s not really a “hey, gang, new rule tonight” kind of thing. So, this 2023 rewrite places the article under the “Game design musing” header, complete with “CAUTION” graphic noting that this is stuff for system hackers. Intro: Refinishing the table What’s wrong with GURPS‘ table linking ST scores to thrust and swing damage? Nothing! It’s done its job for decades, and so far no one’s gotten hurt. (Except all those on the target end of ST 14, 2d swings, of course.)…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Revised Toughness
Intro: “Go ahead, runt, punch me in the gut.” Imagine that’s the growl of a hulking bully with an Olympic wrestler’s build. And imagine that your physique is more that of… er, a guy who once gamed a wrestler PC. (Did you have to imagine very hard?) It’s easy to imagine that your best punch to his gut – or just about anywhere beefy – simply won’t hurt the guy. At all. Oh, maybe a few dozen punches would start some bruising, sure, but you don’t get that chance; his first punch has you coughing up the lunch money as soon as your limbs start working again. That sort of mismatch can be mighty realistic, but…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Grazes
Intro: “It’s just a scrape!” In action fiction, an endless succession of lucky nicks, scrapes, and bullet scratches keep heroes cinematically bloodied but not inconveniently dead. (Glancing, “just a scratch” injuries happen in real life, too, of course!) At the gaming table, the same effect is interesting and easily handled. The content below goes way back to the GURPS 3e days, was updated for 4e around 2009, and now gets a 2023 update for simplification and clarification. The rule Definition of a graze A graze is a glancing blow or any off-center, fleeting, or otherwise unimpressive touch that doesn’t strike squarely – including the lessened blow that results from a defender partially…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Shields and cover
Intro: Under Cover This rule looks at the matter of letting shields provide cover instead of a DB bonus. That option offers some interesting benefits, from a nicely restored (in 4e) ability for shields to protect passively, to detailed protection by body location, to shield walls and other defensive tricks. It all meshes nicely with existing game rules for cover, too. The rule In general, treat shields as offering only their DB, per written rules. But whenever the GM thinks it sensible, treat shields as cover (p. B407) instead: Defending Cover provides powerful protection, but there’s a trade-off: a shield protects with either its cover or its DB, not both…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Shields and size
Intro: “Is that a Frisbee?” “Sir! We demand that you halt this tea party right now, and give us back our shields!” “Er, begging your pardon, brave Knights of the Shire, but we haven’t seen any shields . . .” “Those . . . things you’re using as tea saucers! Give them back!” Hmm, just how big is a Halfling’s shield? And what happens if the little chap picks up a human’s shield? GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 3 p. 8 offers some nice rules for Pixie weapons and other “tiny tools” – not generic, physics-friendly stuff, but quick’n’dirty guidelines for easy play. While shields got left out of that discussion, handling them…
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COSH: Combat Skill Hack (GURPS 3e)
COSH is a fun, easy, GURPS-like way to build most any fighting skill, or modify existing fighting skills, in GURPS 3e. Any GM can drop COSH into a GURPS game and be designing unique new combat skills within minutes. History v1.0: Created 03/03/14 v1.1b update (03/03/15): Simplified COSH construction of missile skills, thanks to J. Schipper. v1.2 update (03/04/23): Dropped the beta designation. Clarified use of limits on Dodge Bonus and ST Bonus enhancements. Added example of using COSH to morph a skill into a different skill during play. Added lots of maneuverless “classic” combat skills, a bunch of new skills, and new “Large/Small ST Bonus (single use)” enhancements. Thanks,…
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Game Master tools: Keeping combat challenge level right
Here’s some further musing on a SJG GURPS Forum post I just made. The question: How to keep “challenge level” right for PCs going into combat – not so easy as to be dull, but not so deadly as to litter the cave with PC corpses? The question was posed by a D&D player just starting to GM GURPS, which makes it a particularly good one for him to ask; GURPS combat can be much deadlier than D&D players might expect, leading to that cave-floor litter. But it’s a good question for any GM to ask, new or experienced, whether changing game systems or not. Whatever the game, the right…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Die, monster, die!
Intro: “Whaddya mean, the Colossal Amoeba passed out?” A fierce dragon finally meets its match: Conrad the Bavarian, who takes the dragon down from 120 to 0 HP and goes to administer final rites. Good job, but one question: how long will it take to deliver another 120 points to kill the unconscious wyrm? Or 240 points if the beast makes its HT roll? Up to 600 more points if those HT rolls keep succeeding? (Dragon HT can be pretty high!) Won’t the magic-user, the thief, and the cleric have nabbed all the gold pieces by the time Conrad finishes hacking away? Well, if your character managed to chalk up 120…
